Thursday, June 16, 2011

Sixteen days ago I gave myself a goal to write every day for 30 days for the sole purpose of writing. I placed no other expectations on myself whatsoever. Just write, whatever happens I will call it art, or at worst a bad memory.

I have been a long-time journaler and blogger but never have I put a plan into the volume of writing that I would do. I didn’t think it would be that hard. I was wrong. Also I didn’t think it would become the all-and-all of self-awareness. I was wrong.

Writing is therapy, writing is also the onset of schizophrenia.

To be honest my fear was that you the reader would become bored and stop viewing this blog. Second, the fear was that this blog is supposed to be a working portfolio about photography and I knew very little of what I was going to write would be on that topic. Lastly, well probably lastly, I promised myself that I would not look at the stats counter.

This 30 days of writing is for myself and I'd be damned if I was going to be swayed based on the number of viewership that I received. The reason that I turned comments off on this site was so that I would not be influenced to “Do The Work” that would be influenced from reading comments.

When your job is to create, you create. If you are doing what you are "told to do” either by readers, fans or clients then you are not creating, you are assembling. This is why many artists' first project are their best. They had a lifetime of living to create that batch of work. Then maybe that leads to another year or two, if they're lucky to create the next volume of work. Having the voices of the first success in your head is a maddening place to be. Being praised, noticed and patted on the back is great, having money in your pocket is even better, but duplicating previous works is not. Nothing in this universe is repetitive (accept maybe reincarnation, ask a jellyfish about that.)

Nothing is ever the same twice, be it light, art or doing the work.

Sixteen days, a page a day, fourteen pages to go. During this process a shift in what I was writing became apparent to me. I wanted the words to be purposeful to me and hopefully to you. I started asking questions. Then I started answering them, that only leads to more questions, thank God I have fourteen days to go on that one.

Writing is therapy, writing is the onset of schizophrenia - I know I said it twice but it's worth repeating. OK, disregard my "nothing is repetitive" line a couple of sentences back. A soon as I wrote that line I knew some science geek would be calling me out. (To the science geek reading this, hugs, I'm glad you are here).

Here is the problem. I looked at the stats counter. It's good, really good. Readership has gone up 500%, that is not a typo...500%...holy shit.